The City of Alpharetta has completed a temporary trail to connect users of the Alpharetta Big Creek Greenway to the Forsyth County segment of the trail along McGinnis Ferry Road. The 800-foot connection is intended to provide access between the two trail systems until the permanent connection is built as part of a planned widening of McGinnis Ferry Road.
Shortly after completing the northern extension of the Big Creek Greenway along Windward Parkway and Union Hill Road, Alpharetta officials learned that the original schedule of the McGinnis Ferry Road Project had been extended, with construction unlikely to begin until 2023.
“When the Georgia Department of Transportation advised us of the schedule change, we knew we needed to find a way to quickly make that 800-foot connection,” said Pete Sewczwicz, Alpharetta’s Director of Public Works. “The challenge was coming up with a way to do it that was very inexpensive since whatever we built would be removed to make way for the McGinnis Ferry Road Widening Project, which will include a 10-foot-wide multi-use trail.”
The solution the City came up with was to construct a temporary trail segment using asphalt millings from nearby road resurfacing projects. Asphalt millings are ground-up recycled asphalt that has been removed from a roadway as part of the process to prepare the road for being repaved. The millings can be laid, a binding agent applied, and pressure applied with a compactor to create a solid, stable surface.
Because millings are the byproduct of recycled asphalt pavement, they are much cheaper than new asphalt or other paving material and were readily available because of repaving projects happening nearby.
“In this case, one of our vendors gave us the millings and delivered them to our public works facility at no cost,” Sewczwicz said. “That means that, aside from purchasing landscape fabric to prevent vegetation growth, the cost for making the trail connection was only that associated with staff time and the use of the City’s equipment. The construction time was less than a week.”
The temporary trail connection is now open for public use.